This is a final update and goodbye from the development team at CyberDream. Creating Virtual Battlegrounds with our community has been one of the greatest pleasures of my and our teams’ life. I am sorry to those of you whom had hoped that Virtual Battlegrounds could be more. But I am eternally grateful for the experiences we’ve had building and playing this game together. Battle on Warriors!
If you’re a developer or are interested in learning about the development of Virtual Battlegrounds I encourage you to read this blog post here where I did a deep dive postmortem. It was quite the epic journey.
On a positive note we do have a final update to share with you all. Frankly speaking we’ve been sitting on this update for some time in hopes that we could return to Virtual Battlegrounds development and add more content before releasing it, but unfortunately we've had to move onto other projects so this update isn't as dense as we'd have liked. It does have a large rolodex of bug fixes, quality of life features and a new tutorial to help with onboarding.
Tutorial Update
One of the biggest issues we had identified around Christmas was new player bounce rate. We noticed many players didn’t make it through the tutorial. Because of this we decided to double down on our tutorial. Our tutorial has a over eighty quality of life improvements that make it much more approachable for a fresh experience.
Bug Fixes / Quality of Life changes * Improved Vegetation Performance * Door LOD pop in bugs across the map * Fixed bug where players clip through shipping container * Smoothed part of Mount Ostenbirk to make it more traversable. * Updated new pop up UI * Fixed some vegetation tree visual inconsistencies with billboarding * Fixed the pumpkin skin * Removed vegetation inside of houses * Updated wrist watcher shader to look more natural with highlights overlaid * Fixed Sam the Robot Vos in lobby * Improved holosight smoothing * Fixed players bad spawning in trees in warmup mode * Made it easier to cock the P90 * First time users load directly into the tutorial * Fixed column of skins being unselectable * Fixed issues with dropping ammo out of backpack in lobby hovering after start * Fixed up issue with ammo not going in backpack * Improved UX / UI for zipline interaction * Made backpack handling a bit easier to navigate * Fixed bug where throwing a basketball played a SFX when it should not * Players are forcibly ejected from helicopter earlier to avoid Ocean outings * Players deep in the ocean are teleported inland. * Smoothed hand movement for very shaky hands * Fixed bug with grip interaction selected for the backpack * AI land at a time closer to the player landing in battle royale mode * VO Lobby Timer countdown improved * Fixed some longstanding bugs with Virtual Desktop * Disabled body UI while holding backpack * Added lights to HELO to better indicate UX for jumping * Fixed some bugs with press to crouch. * About fifty other minor fixes and QoL improvements.
Final Play Session
Warriors! We are going to have one last developer organized play session together this Saturday at 12PM ET / 4PM UTC. Come hang with the developers in game.
Season 2 - December 17th
Hello Warriors!
We're excited to share with you the biggest update since the launch of our game back in April coming December 17th.
Season 2 - Official Trailer
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Season 2 - Update
We've got a lot of BIG updates to share with you about season two. They include warehouse district,new lobby system, shotguns, weather modes, art overhaul, new killroom, new gun range and a plethora of minor improvements including bug fixes, optimizations, minor features and design tweaks.
Warehouse District
Welcome to the warehouse district! It's our biggest and most thoughtfully designed location yet. Zipline across forklifts, traverse the inner workings of multi floor store rooms, or take cover behind storage containers.
Pump Shotgun
We built a new gun handling system for the pump shotgun with bullet spray, pumpable rounds, and loadable shells. Expect new shotguns to start popping up all of the map. The new king of close corridor action.
Randomized weather System
We built a number of weather conditions to play in VBG. Original version, overcast, thunderstorm, moonlight, sunny day, and red sun. Each time you start a match a weather version will be chosen at random giving the game a unique feel. Let us know your favorite!
New Lobby System
In addition to a whole new look to the lobby with custom banners that showcase the seasons legends and warriors! We built a lobby system that should make it much easier to quickly hop into the games and find players. One of the biggest issues we've felt the game has had was its lobby system, it took too long to get games going and finding other players was difficult. With this new system queue up the second you want to for a match or hang out in the public lobby room until you get a group going and then queue up.
New Kill Room
We've all had a blast getting kills in the killroom while waiting on a match. With the new lobby and lobby system you can chill out now and hop onto the red or blue side for a few quick kills whenever you want. No more being forced to wait in the killroom. This Kill Room is BIG! Big enough for some team battles. That or skip this portion of the game entirely and go straight to the battlegrounds. Your choice warrior.
Multiplayer Gun Range
By default Virtual Battlegrounds is always multiplayer now outside of private games and your private room. As soon as you step into the gun range expect to test your skills against friends or strangers!
Developer Stream
Expect our creative director Sean Pinnock to be streaming today 12/11/20 5PM ET or 10PM UTC on our twitch channel. He'll be give us the latest on Virtual Battlegrounds and Season two. Pop in for any questions you might have.
Added join game functionality to public lobby area.
Added banners to the public lobby that showcase warriors and legends of that season.
Added advanced vegetation option that adds a lot more detail to the map.
Added skins for players who hit legend and warrior in season one.
Added zone hit visual effect.
Added the ability to climb any part of a tree including all of their branches.
Replaced all major UI elements with new ones.
Design Changes
Made matches 30% faster by decreasing wait time between zones and increasing zone close speed.
Reduced max queue time to 3 minutes.
Made parachute auto deploy if you get close and don't pull the chute. No more splats. Also adding an option to remove this feature so you can pull a chute at your discretion.
Made trigger mode on by default for new players.
Updated holographic and wrist watch maps to include new locations.
Updated all in game billboards to have fake Erebus Corp ads.
Temporarily disabled squads to focus on a more polished FFA mode. New squads mode coming soon.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where players were invisible in private zones.
Fixed a bug where players could spawn in the elevator roof.
Fixed a bug where players could bring guns into main lobby area.
Fixed a bug where everyone's gun could vibrate on one players reload.
Fixed a bug where ziplines would hit a stop point before ending.
Fixed a bug where the wrong ambient SFX would play in the lobby.
Fixed a bug where players magazines would float around them.
Fixed a bug where Sam the Robot would not talk to you.
Fixed a bug where the Alpha skin would not appear in the private lobby.
Fixed a bug where skin selection would not work.
Fixed a bug where push reload was not working on magazines.
Fixed a bug where bots would not kill each other.
Fixed a bug where front hand grip animation would pop open relentlessly.
Fixed a bug where solo victory achievements were not getting unlocked on steam.
Fixed a bug where players name tags would appear at some point after they land.
Fixed a bug where dying from a fall would not register your death to other players.
Fixed a bug where you could not grab grenades from your backpack.
Fixed a bug where it looked like other players were gripping in the wrong location of guns.
Fixed a bug where your front hand would break if you held a gun with two hands and then release your front hand very far away from the gun.
Fixed a bug where hitting join match sometimes took multiple clicks.
Fixed a bug where a forced reload could occur by bringing a second weapon close to its magazine.
Fixed a rare bug where you could get teleported back into the helicopter and die instantly.
Fixed a bug where you could get multiple victories on a single victory.
Fixed a bug where you could not invite friends into your lobby.
Fixed a bug where victory / death music was not tied to music volume.
Fixed a bug where the game was not ending for some players.
Fixed a bug where the backpack held animations were off.
Fixed a bug where the game could hard freeze for multiple people at once.
Fixed a bug where bots would not die for some players.
Game Optimizations
Added aggressive occlusion culling, loding, and static batching methods that improved performance in high density locations like Sandford, Asylum and Warehouse district
Optimized object poolers by disabling meshes of all objects not currently in use.
Improved performance of AI drastically by switching from collision to distance checks for player search functions
Improved performance of UI by replacing Unity Canvases with custom shaders.
Join us this weekend for a limited time only Water is Lava event!
Are you ready for a brand new take on a battle royale? All of the water in the game has been turned into lava and its rising!
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Planned Matches
Friday at 6PM ET or 11PM UTC
Saturday at 1PM ET or 6PM UTC
See you on the battlefield soon warriros!
Spooky Weekend Event #2
Hello Warriors!
Because we had such a good time last weekend we decided to extend the spooky event into this weekend too!
We'll have more matches planned this weekend the same times as last weekend!
So join us Friday at 6PM EST, Midnight and Saturday at 1PM EST.
See you on the battlefield warriors!
Virtual Battlegrounds - Spooky Update - Mid Season Update
Hello Warriors!
Welcome to our biggest update since the start of Season 1! It's EA - Racoon 0.7.2.0. On top of our limited time spooky update this week we're also releasing our mid season update. This comes with a lot of quality of life improvements, bug fixes and a few new features. We'll share it all in this post.
New Parachute
A lot of you asked for it and now you've got it! We've got a new physically controlled parachute in the game. You now how to pull your chute and control it by gripping the left and right handles. Make sure you pull the chute or you'll splat!
Revolving Game Modes
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Starting with our spooky game mode this week. We're planning on releasing new revolving game modes every week for the rest of the holiday season! With the exception of the spooky event this week game modes will only be available during limited time windows. Usually just during our events over the weekend. So make sure to drop in during those times to get in on the action!
Some more game modes we have planned incoming.
Floor is lava.
Zombies.
Juggernaut.
Knives + Nades.
And your ideas!
Season One is Ending Soon
Reminder Season One is coming to an end by December 1st! Make sure to achieve the warrior rank to unlock the warrior skin for S1 and the legend rank for the legend skin! This is the ONLY opportunity you'll receive to unlock these skins.
Warrior Skin
Achieve warrior before the end of the season to unlock this skin.
Legend Skin
Who will become legend?
Achieve legend before the end of the season to unlock this skin.
Pumpkin Man Skin
Also hop in and play at least one match during the Halloween event to unlock the pumpkin man skin!
Full EA Raccoon 0.7.2 Update List
New Features
Added new Parachute System
Added weekly revolving game modes.
Added hit direction visuals.
Added kill distance on kills.
Added new wristwatch.
Added pumpkin man skin.
Quality of life improvements
Added ability to mute specific members in your squad.
Moved achievement unlocks over to our cloud save system.
Lots of texture and asset updates.
High texture quality settings now increase visual fidelity even further.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where glass would break when walking past it.
Fixed a bug where gunstock settings would not properly save.
Fixed a bug where M4 recoil would bounce.
Fixed a bug where backpack would get stuck to your hand.
Fixed a bug where players would not win the game with 2 players left.
Fixed a bug where dropping the gun while holding the front gun could break it.
Fixed a bug where gunfire VFX would not follow the gun.
Fixed a bug where Oculus HMD was not getting the full 360 degrees of input.
Fixed a bug where you could the see the UI skin selection while loading.
Fixed a bug where some silencer SFX were not networked.
Fixed a bug where directional movement would slow down based on hand angles when moving.
Fixed a bug where players were painfully ejected when the helicopter reached its end destination.
Fixed a bug where gunstock setting rotations past certain angles would begin to wig out.
Fixed several stat progression bugs for kills on bots.
Fixed crazy fast feet animation in helicopter.
Fixed a bug where you could hear other people grab their guns.
Fixed a bug where you could clip through the lighthouse.
Weekend Spooky Events
Lastly make sure to register on Challonge for the events we're hosting this weekend. We're aiming to pack the lobbies!
Not only do we have a big mid season update dropping next week (more info on this later) but we're also releasing our new spooky game mode for a limited time next week! This spooky game mode will run from October 29th to November 3rd next week! So hop in and lets get spooky.
Teaser Trailer
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In case you haven't seen it already, here's the teaser trailer for the spooky update dropping next week.
Exclusive Pumpkinman Skin
Log in and play at least one game during the spooky event to receive an exclusive pumpkin man skin. bOooOOo
Dark Mode
Hope you're not too afraid of the dark. ːsteamhappyː
Zombie Bots
Zombies go brrrr.
Events / Challonge Registration
Because we know that lobbies aren't always full and we want you guys to have a shot playing the new game mode with lots of people we're planning some events during the last week of October! Make sure to click the registration link below if you want to group up and play with the devs and the community.
Spooky Update - Holiday Season Plans - Season 2 Information
Hello Warriors!
It's been a couple of months since we've given you an update so we wanted to fill you in.
We've got two of our biggest updates to date coming up soon. Number one is our spooky update which will release during the last week of October and number two is our season two update which will release in late November or early December. The season 2 update will be by far our biggest update to date!
Spooky Update
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We promised you a "Mid Season Update" last time we spoke, unfortunately we were not able to finish it during September like we had planned. Instead we'll be releasing it with our "Spooky Update" at the end of the month. This update will feature everything planned for our mid season update like a new lobby and queue system a plethora of bug fixes, a few new minor features like physically controlled parachutes as well as a new spooky game mode. ːsteamhappyː
Holiday Season / Marketing Plans
Alright warriors it's about time we start getting players back into VBG. Once we rollout this big update at the end of the month the team is going to turn on its marketing gears again. Our goal is to fill up lobbies again by the end of the year. First though we needed to get the game to a more polished state and fix some of the critical issues, now that we're feeling those core issues have been mostly fixed we feel comfortable spreading the good word that VBG is back again. So how are we going to do this?
Weekly Events - Every week we're going to be hosting several events at the start of November. Not only that but EVERY WEEK we'll be dropping a BRAND NEW game mode during these events.
Weekly Dev Streams - We want to keep you guys in the loop with what we're doing starting today and every week until the end of the year CyberDream will be hosting a 30 minute dev stream from 5:00 - 5:30PM EST. Catch us later on youtube if you miss us live or join us to ask us Q and A.
Seasonal Events - Obviously, we'll be releasing something special for Halloween and Christmas ;)
Season Two - By far our biggest update yet will be released later this year. Look out for it!
Free Weekends - We'll probably partake in a free weekend some point later in the year too.
Marketing Content - I'm warning you now guys, we're going to get annoying. The team has been pretty quiet the last few months so we can focus on development, we felt like the game needed some more love before we really pushed it again. That time is about to wrap up as we ship this mid season update. We're going to post lots of announcements, do lots of streams, events, etc. If you like VBG this is the time for you, if not you'd better unfollow now. ːsteamhappyː
Weekly Streaming
Our lead developer Sean Pinnock AKA Seanybaby2 is going live on twitch at 5:00 PM EST 10/16/2020. If you miss the live version we'll share the video later on our YouTube Channel.
Look out for more information on how to join us in these upcoming in our future posts.
See you on the battlefield warriors!
EA Patch 0.6.9.0 (Cat) + State of VBG Update
Hello Warriors!
There's a few different things we want to go over with you today. First is the current state of VBG with the player counts, second is a very quick overview of our immediately planned updates as well as the season two update we have planned. And lastly is the patch itself. If you only want the patch notes scroll down until you see the cat!
Current State of VBG
First off we want to thank you all for your continued support of Virtual Battlegrounds. Our team is still very excited for the future of VBG. We're aware that player counts are low right now but we're confident we can bolster player numbers again. We have a lot of quality of life and game play improvements planned for Virtual Battlegrounds and once they're in place we'll begin our marketing efforts again. Our goal has not changed from making the best VR Battle Royale that we can.
Next Steps
Mid Season Update
We have one more major update planned for Season One. This will be our biggest update for the season and we're calling it our "Mid Season Update". This will feature some major reworks of the lobby system, improved AI and even more stability and performance improvements to the game. Our hope for this patch is to make it more accessible for new players and to make it easier to player without other players.
Spooky Update
Sometime in October we'll release something spooky ;D. No spoilers so more on this later.
Season Two
After this update in October our updates will slow down until our season 2 update in November. This will be by far the single largest update we've introduced into Virtual Battlegrounds. This will also be our biggest marketing effort since release week. If we're really going to reinvigorate our player numbers it will be during this time and possibly the spooky update too.
EA Patch 0.6.9.0 (Cat)
Alright guys on to the patch! Again the goal of this patch as similar to last one was purely stability and performance improvements. We actually made some major headway here this patch. We're finally feeling comfortable enough to begin adding content back into Virtual Battlegrounds again after this patch. Expect some new stuff from us in the next one.
Texture Streaming
One of the big issues we've had with Virtual Battlegrounds is the sheer amount of VRAM and RAM the game required to run. This wasn't much of an issue for those of you with very high end machines but the average VR user was being pretty heavily affected. Long story short we managed to reduce the memory requirements for the game by 50%. This should result in less crashing, better performance and overall a more stable experience.
Visual Updates
While optimizing our game assets we've been taking a look at the visual fidelity of various assets and updating the ones that were especially low quality. Here are a few assets updated this patch. Expect more visual updates over the next few patches.
New Bridge
New Ladders
New Gas Station
Performance Improvements
Again expect more performance improvements this patch thanks to the texture streaming and physics optimizations we built into this patch. Mileage will vary but we've seen numbers from 5-30% gains for players.
More Music
Integrated some music into our JukeBox from one of our players Mekugi! Check it out in the lobby.
Honestly warriors most of the stuff we've done this patch is going to be in the list below. As our goal was primarily stability and performance for this update this had us going through the many bugs that users have found over the last few months and tackling them one at a time. We've got more to go but the list is shrinking.
New Features
Added an underwater breathing mechanic (players can now drown)
Added a new zipline system that replaced the old one. (functionally very similar but less buggy)
Design Changes
Made apples heal you overtime instead of instantly (limit exploitative healing tactics during combat).
Increased height of doors on generic houses by another 6 inches. (For you tall folk)
Made it so you could shoot through fences.
Made the bell ring when you shoot it.
Made it so you can see the helicopter trail on the map when in the helicopter.
Made bots drop in a bit earlier. Should be roughly the same time as the players drop in.
Changed press space to hold grip on the credits screen to open up the credits.
Added an option to crouch while standing with a button.
Added air drop SFX to make it more apparent.
Major Bug Fixes
Fixed jumping without air control exploit. (Forever Jump)
Fixed gun angles flipping up when players got kills.
Fixed not being able to put anything in backpack until you hold it once.
Fixed zipline not working in the tutorial area.
Minor Bugs
Fixed loot in some cabinets not being grab able in Sandford.
Fixed broken terrain geometry near Sandford.
Fixed clipping through tractor body in Maetland.
Fixed clipping through boulders on the south side of the island near Motel.
Fixed first gunshot lagging the game.
Fixed Alpha skin not popping up in the lobby.
Fixed ziplines in water area near shoreline not working.
Fixed roads in Sandford not playing SFX.
Fixed weapons from other players not pointing the direction they're aiming.
Suspected Fix | Things we think we fixed but we need your help confirming The dreaded scope bug. (You know the one)
And we're going live now at https://www.twitch.tv/cyberdreamvr to discuss our next steps for Virtual Battlegrounds.
See you on the battlefield warriors!
Alpha Patch 0.6.7.0 (Squirrel) Stability Update
Hello Warriors!
Big stability patch coming today. After rushing to get season one out we decided to buckle down and focus on bug fixing and performance for our next update. We know that VBG while at it's core has been fun it hasn't been without its issues. This patch should tighten up a lot of those issues. More fixes coming soon.
Full list of patch notes.
New Features
BHaptics Suit Integration
Quality of life improvements
Improved kill trading. Should be much less likely to occur, we found an issue in the code that made it twice as likely to occur as it should have been.
Directional icon on map for helicopter trajectory.
Double the points for winning / losing in ranked games. Should make for faster ranking up.
Game uses about 15% less memory.
Slight CPU performance increases. More coming soon.
Visual improvements to the ladders.
Bug Fixes
We've confirmed fixed these internally
Fixed end game card showing victory when you've lost.
Fixed scopes on guns dissapearing.
Fixed receiving victory before landing in solo games
Fixed crashing on lower end GPUs on game launch.
Fixed m4/m16 recoil
Fixed click sfx when pulling right trigger.
Fixed leveling not working
Fixed shoulder disjointed on marines.
Fixed a bug where players could become invulnerable before game ends.
Fixed stat progressions getting stuck
Fixed physics based wall throwing
Fixed grenades not giving kill credit
Fixed grenade launcher not giving kill credit
Fixed terrain holes around road network in sandford
Fixed glitches with menu UI sliders
Fixed bad collision on underwater sand
Fixed visible ghost players flying around after death and shooting
Fixed being able to bring a gun into the main lobby area
Fixed not receiving score in some ranked games
Fixed airdrop sometimes not dropping drops inside of zone
Fixed AI not dying from grenades sometimes
Fixed spawning air drops in the pre match lobby
Fixed apples sometimes getting stuck in your hand
Fixed holding a gun on death
Fixed getting a victory in single player games before bots spawn in some cases.
Fixed deagle breaking when switching firing modes
Fixed five seven breaking when switching firing modes
Fixed sandford hole in terrain near the bridge
Fixed map not turning on wrist when angled away from player
We suspect we fixed these: (Need help confirming)
Suspected fix hand staying open animated while holding a gun
Suspected fix end game card showing victory when you've lost in some squad games
Suspected fix gun calibration not saving in some cases
Player Counts
We know the player counts have dropped a lot. It sucks but we're not giving up on the game anytime soon. In fact it's just the opposite, we're more motivated now then ever to make VBG an awesome game. We're going to start doing weekly events and continue pushing out updates regularly. We believe that VBG can be a top VR Battle Royale and get constant full lobbies again! But we're going to need your help to spread the word. If you're having fun playing VBG tell your friends. We'll plan on doing some free weekends in the future too.
Furthermore we have plans to make the game more fun and easier to play with less players too. Bots will be smarter and dropping into matches will be much quicker. No more waiting in the lobby for 5-10 minutes for games. More on that when we drop the next patch.
Play with the Devs
We're doing a play with the devs event this Saturday at 1PM EST. Come in, squad up, shoot us down or whatever! We meant it when we said see you on the battlefield :D.
Twitch Stream
As usual we're doing a twitch stream with our updates at 5PM EST today (now if this is just going live). We'll be talking about our plans for the next update, events, player counts, and answering any QA. We're also going to start saving our streams on our youtube channel so you can catch up on them the following week.
The Dev team invites you to join us in our Official Discord Server where you'll find LFG channels and get an inside view in to the development of the game.
